In the last article I talked about quantity social media relationships; in this article, I will talk about quality relationships on social media. Now that you started the right networks online, how do you maintain and grow them?

My story with Mr. James (and many others) continues till today. Though I am no more in Uganda, we keep greeting each other and inquire about each other. I keep writing articles on organization development that could help him grow his business; So doing, there is room to move forward in our partnership.

There are 2 major things to do in other to maintain and grow true professional relationships on social media:

Identify the relationship starters. What did you do to kick start those online connections? You must invest 80% of your time in those things you did at the beginning of those networks. Read the former article to refresh yourself on what you could do to start true friendships on social media.

Multiply them and innovate. Now that you identified what worked to start your online connections, multiply those actions and add new ideas. This could take only 20% of your time online because creativity will come from the routine of interacting with your connections.

For example, you could use events like professional anniversary or promotion or birthday celebration to stay connected with your friends. You could also inquire about the needs of your contacts through a survey and then create valuable services for them. Take time to like, comment on your contacts posts; it’s an excellent way to show interest on their behalf.

If you are in the writing business, the best advice is to keep writing. Continue to provide updated information for personal, community and organizational development. Furthermore, allow your online relationships to give their feedback on your contents. Without realizing, they will become participants in your next writing project; and what you will write shall empower them and make them feel more secure with you.

Let me know how you maintain and grow your relationships online. Leave a comment bellow and don’t forget to share this article with your friends.

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I discovered the Experiential Learning Cycle, also called ELC, five years ago during a communications trainer workshop. The approach is well known in the education world to help learners and trainers drive objectives results from their experiences. It’s one of the most secure way for autonomous learning where you train others how to learn.

When you are interested in bringing something new in your environment or you dream of solving personal or organizational problems, the ELC could the best method to organize your ideas. When it comes to solutions writing, the ECL is also a tool you can make a good use of. It’s simple and with practice, you master it very easily.

Image credit: Tesol

I noticed that I write easily these last days when I start with a concrete experience I went through. I realised that words flow easily and I find myself writing more than the planned time. This is simply because I am applying the ELC in my writing process. This how it works:

The concrete experience is the activity phase of the actions done. You did something or participated actively or passively to an event. You took a decision to start a new business, a blog, a personal relationship or anything that requires actions. It’s the beginning of your learning journey. From the action to produce a result, you can develop an incredible amount of knowledge and resources for you and others.

Observation. Here you share what happened. you actually write in detail what you saw , heard, smelt, tasted or touched and how you felt about it ; You put emotions and sentiment in everything that took place. You could go further and number the people that were present and describe each one of them with the maximum of precision you can.

Interpretation. At this stage, you realize that your experience produced some results. The most important here is to understand the impact of those results on your goals or purpose. Results are meaningless unless you give interpretation to them. This step lead you to draw conclusions that form a new paradigm: It’s called generalization. You become a solution provider expert.

Analysis. Now you need to plan how to make maximum use of the new lessons you just created to carry your next action. This action will lead you to better results and will show that you are improving in your skills, knowledge and attitudes.

I started my blog seed4future.com on January 2016. This means I had to produce readable contents for an audience. I also had to choose my audience.

I felt very excited to start my own social business. And my joy increases when I saw my audience growing. But I felt frustrated that people were not making comment on my blog and I started worrying what was wrong with my contents.

I understood that for people to make comment , I have to add a ” call to action” at the end of my articles.

The coming articles all had “call to actions”. I had some few comment and decided to do it more and more. I realized that I generate more leads when I include ” call to action” on socio media. LinkedIn for example generates more comments than I could imagine.

Do you see how simple but methodic the ELC could make you write? I summarized each step to facilitate your integration of the ELC. I just generated 144 words content by following the ELC procedure; If I add more informations, I could easily write a 700 words article. This is excellent for new writers who lack words to express their ideas or, for writers in search for a guideline to canalize their inspiration.

Now It’s you turn to create your own content by applying the ELC. Just fill the table below with simple statement corresponding to the ELC approach.

Action

Observation

Interpretation

Analysis

I would like to hear from you to know which writing procedure you use for your blogposts.

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In June 2016, I checked seed4future’s email box and I found there: “Looking for partnership to grow my NGO”. What an excitement! This message came when I was questioning the impact of six months spent on social media, sharing development blog posts. Two months later, I met with Mr. James for 2 hours in Nairobi for our first encounter after weeks of online discussions.

The connection with Mr. James leads me to be connected with 4 others development professionals in Nairobi, Netherlands, and Uganda. Today, we still exchange through Facebook inbox conversations and I am planning how to grow our partnership.

It’s good to understand that social media friendships or virtual friendships can fall into professional, family or emotional links. In this article, I focus only on the professional aspect of virtual relationships. I would like to share my personal experience on how I started some true friendships on social media.

From physical to virtual. One of the easiest ways to make genuine friendships online is to be connected to people you know in the normal professional life through one of the media channels. In case one of you travel or have to work in remote places, you are sure to maintain quality conversations and updated information about each other.

From Virtual to Physical. Some professional relationships start online like the one I have with Mr. James. Most professional who get recruited for examples through online application have to meet later to sign documents or have physical meetings to confirm the identity of the new recruit.

Find common interests. If you integrate online groups that share the same professional vision with you, you will more likely find true friends there. Linked for example is one the most successful networking community where you will easily connect to new professional and develop authentic interactions.

The law of the 100th. This law stipulates that if you have 1000 contacts in social networks connections, only 10 will be active. Though this approach is mostly used by marketing professionals, you can also use it to grow your network by simply inviting people to join.One way to easily do it is by inviting friend of friends; Also, if you receive an invitation (even if you know the person), make sure you go on the person’s profile page to check if it’s not a hacker; Generally hacker have fake information about the date their page was created or their birthday.

Propose your skills. When I started blogging, one of my goals was to put my professional CV in form of written evidence of my skills. In fact, Mr. James contacted me because he read one of my articles on fundraising for African NGO. Proposing your skills through blogging could take time but it makes an expert in your area. Relationships built from such channel are everlasting.

Attract them. Finally, you can start a good relationship online by attractively positioning yourself on different social media. By attracting them, I mean to do something that is relevant enough for someone to say: “I would like to connect with him” or “I would like to see his profile”. The best way is to decide to share something valuable on social media like “tips for success”, “ways for breakthrough” or motivational messages.

I encourage you to start a blog and write interesting topics for professionals and you will surely attract some friends. I did it and in less than one year, I grew my contacts to 1263 on Facebook and 208 on LinkedIn; this is without the numerous groups I am belong to.

If you found this article interesting, share it in your network. You can also write to let me know how you built true professional relationships online.

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That Wednesday morning, I was trying to load a research from Google chrome browser when my phone stopped working. I taught it was a normal malfunctioning as it happened before but later on, I couldn’t switch on my phone again. I began to panic when I realized I could no more have access to my phone for my daily routine activities such as the need to communicate, time on social media and transportation needs.

Three days later, I finally decide to buy a new phone and I had an idea: When setting back my phone number, I will know who my true friends are. Who really missed me during these three days offline? Being the one texting to other and sometimes they don’t reply made me feel I was wasting time. Or, being in so many WhatsApp groups that I no more knew which one was growing me or who was reading the articles I shared.

This would be the unexpected test to discover who my friends are really. Who will write and say: “Hey Boris! These are three days I have not heard from you! Is everything Ok?”

Finally, I bought a new phone, and … I was shocked to spend weeks without a text from around 90 % of my formal contacts. Some of the people inquired about me through my wife by asking my contacts. I added them back to my contacts list as my true relationships.

Some others send me a text not knowing I lost their contacts. Since some don’t have a profile picture, I apologize for asking their identity; Many did not respond despite the fact that I explained I lost many contacts while changing my phone.

Around a month later, I discovered that my contacts list dropped drastically. “These are my true friends,” I told myself. “These are the people In which I should invest consistently.”

I regretted all the wasted time on people that don’t really take me seriously. I am also happy that I can save so much time and I can write on a regular basis.

This situation made me reflect on social media friendships. Who are your real friends on social media? Those who like share or comment your posts, or those who look after you if you are offline for a while?

You can make this three steps test to know who your friends on social media are really:

Switch off your phone and reset it after 3 to 5 days and then wait to see who will look after you.

Stop being active on social media for a couple of weeks and each time verifies your inbox messages or emails. You’ll be amazed by the restricted number of “so-called friends” who care for you.

Uninstall Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, Skype, LinkedIn and another social network from your phone to avoid the temptation of always be the first to start a discussion. Make sure you use your PC once a day to check your discussion line on those networks, and then compare those who diligently inquire about you.

It sounds crazy right? But you have the choice of living in an elusive world of social media friendships or decide to build on solid foundations of people who care for each other.

Another benefit of doing this friendship scanning is the amount of time gained offline. You would be able to spend more time on those who are really important to you. You would also have time to invest on your skills and develop your potential to become an expert in your domain.

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A few years ago blogging was completely unheard of.It wasn’t even in the dictionary. Fast forward to today and blogging has become a culture as rooted as brushing your teeth. Even though everyone (at least that’s what I think) is blogging, not everyone is doing it effectively and efficiently.

Identify Your Motive
Understandably, everyone has different motives for blogging. For some it’s a way to meet new people while for others it’s a means to building or strengthening a business. Some even use it therapeutically too, and it works! Before you start your soon to be viral blog, define your motive. Why are you blogging? What do you hope to achieve?

Develop an Efficient System
Whatever your aim for blogging, you have to build a system that is efficient. This means your system should give you desired results with minimum effort or cost.

Time is a commodity that everyone is running short of. We all have a myriad of other commitments that have to be included in our limited budget of time. This is why you need an efficient system for your blogging endeavour. Every second counts.

Develop an Effective System
Your system should also be effective. An effective blog is one that produces the desired results. It is a blog that engages your readers’ attention and emotions. The results? More followers. More people to affirm you and, for those in it for the money, more conversions.

Did I mention that efficiency and effectiveness can be achieved in 30 minutes? I didn’t? Well then read on.

Like I said earlier, the key is to create a system that will help you achieve your blogging goals. To do that, ask yourself a few key questions I’ve outlined below. Your answers to these questions are a complete blog post that will hopefully go viral.

Blog Post Checklist

1. What’s in it for my readers?
2. What’s the catchy and memorable headline?
3. Who are my target audience?
4. What are their values and goals?
5. What is stopping them from reaching their goals?
6. What solution can I offer?
7. What action steps should they take to achieve their goals?

As you can well see, a blog that engages and converts is not about you but it’s all about the reader. Too many times we put the proverbial cart before the horse. We make the blog about the product or company.

2 Keys to Engaging Your Audience
People are naturally self centred creatures that are driven by two major factors; pleasure and pain. Understanding these two stimuli will give you the power to persuade your audience.

#1: Relieve Their Pains
Pain is one of the greatest drivers in life. It pushes us out of our comfort zone. It is the pain of hunger that has driven many an entrepreneur to success.

The sixth question above is a pain question. Answer it well and you will grow yourself a tribe of followers. Why? People will do anything to avoid or escape pain.

Tip: People are always looking for solutions to life’s problems. Be the solution provider.

#2. Tickle Their Pleasures
Pain drives or pushes us in a certain direction but pleasure pulls or motivates us. Two opposite ends of the spectrum that ultimately achieve the same results.

Questions one and seven are pleasure questions. Answer them well and your readers will dance to your tune.

Tip: Like the children of Israel in the Bible, everyone is looking for a Moses to take them to a better life. Be that person. Be the leader people can follow to paradise.

Hook Them from the Word Go
When you have answered the question of what the reader will benefit from your blog, hook them with a catchy headline. For help on coming up with magnetic headlines read http://smartblogger.com and sign up for their headline hacks eBook. It’s absolutely free!

Give Them a Little Nudge
You are doing great so far. At this stage your blog post is about to go viral. But before you push the publish button, don’t forget the call to action.

One thing to realise with a call to action is that people hate being pushed into something. A call to action is a small nudge to get your reader to take the big step you want them to take.

A call to action is the answer to the question: “What action steps should they take to achieve their goals?” This is where you marry the solution to your problem to your product, company, newsletter or whatever you are offering.

This is the magic wand that will get your readers onto your mailing list and ultimately, convert them into regular readers and, better still, customers.

How much time are we left with? A minute? Great. That’s enough time for my last tip.

Bonus tip: Build a solid friendship with Google, it is a well of knowledge. *Wink*.In other words, research your subject well before you publish.

There you have it! Go ahead and start now, the world is waiting for that blog your are about to write. If you are not yet following this blog (seed4future.com), make sure you sign up for it today and position yourself for success.

Happy blogging!

Writen by Kato Nkhoma:

Kato Nkhoma is a seasoned teacher of the word with exceptional biblical insight. He has been pastoring full-time for over a decade and is a husband to one wife, Alakanani, and father to two wonderful children, Amal and Koen Watipashe. Kato is currently serving as a missionary in the northern part of Botswana. He has authored 2 books on Amazon and also dabbles in freelance writing.

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I decided to write this article on a special request from my wife. As I was editing an article, she was lying on the bed near me reading about a famous wife’s personality in the world. She was actually very shocked that media depicted this lady as a devil without mentioning her wonderful accomplishments.

“Darling, can you write an article on the power of social media to explain to people how media make them hear only what they want you to know”. I was first reluctant because I wanted her to write the article herself but later I decided to work on it.

If I ask you the question: “How did you know about the last American elections?”, whether you were in the US or not, you will probably answer “through a media”. After Trump was elected president, a professional of communication in Kampala told me that she was aware of President Trump’s actions as if he was his neighbor.

The above example illustrates clearly the importance of media in our society today: Bringing real information as close as possible to the public. But if information is wrongly manipulated due to political, sociocultural or business egocentrism, social media become a bad tool.

Before you swallow anything from social media, particularly your favorite website or TV program, make sure you scan the information the following way:

Make sure the media has no political or socio-cultural discrimination.

Verify the information on other reliable media channels.

If you know someone living in the area where an event is taking place, ask the person about real facts.

Look for lives news, event or webinar.

Don’t trust every videos and pictures on social media. New technologies enable their manipulation in a very dangerous way.

Read blogs to know about people and connect directly with them.

These simple actions could prevent you from living in a utopic world with a lot of prejudices about people, societies, and cultures. They could also make you an active participant on social media when you provide real-time information on a situation.

I would like to know how you scan information on social media to have accurate news in your community and across the globe.